Despite the value of reading, research documents declining reading rates among American adolescents - a decline that exacerbates student dropout rates and academic performance. As a high school English teacher in a public, regional, suburban school, increasing the number of students who deeply read the assigned texts for class has been a…

This case study explored the relationship between levels of content choice in three high school online English language arts courses and evidence of student motivation in student work and students' thoughts about motivation. These courses were designed around the main components of Self-Determination Theory (autonomy, competence, relatedness) and…

In various conversations regarding how to teach language and literacy to adolescent English Learners (ELs), students' voices are often lost. This article privileges those voices by surveying ELs in Texas high schools regarding what, why, and how they want to read and write in and out of school. The authors surveyed the students before and after an…

As a science teacher, I regularly use outside reading assignments (e.g., news articles) to help develop my students' understanding of topics addressed in my anatomy class. However, I have found that in simply reading texts, students often fail to (1) understand the context of the science discussed, (2) make the connections between ideas…

The reading students are required to do for school bears little semblance to the reading they do outside of school. Students today are reading the same texts in school that students read a generation ago, but the varieties of text used outside of school are much different. One result is that many students are unmotivated to become readers.…